North Korea to be attacked; U.S. Nuclear first strike "likely" - Trustable info?

Originally posted by cautiouslypessimistic
I will never understand the "we get em, you don't, we can use em, you can't" logic. Seems very arrogant to me.

There is a difference with despotic stalinist regimes like DPRK having nuclear arsenals. All countries are not equal actors. The US built nuclear
weapons to win the second world war. Allowing anyone to have them would be extremely destabilizing. Every nation in the world has signed the
non-proliferation treaty except India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea.

I only advocated a first strike in the event of a massive land invasion. We're bound by treaty to defend South Korea, however I believe the pentagon
would sooner resort to tactical nukes than lose tens of thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands in a grueling useless land war. Of course this
president wouldn't authorize it. I don't know if air power alone could defend them.

A few dozen low yield warheads would sufficiently break their will. Destroy all retaliatory nuclear weapons and infrastructure in a first strike, and
lay down a row of impacts evenly spaced across the border, creating a wasteland and breaking their lines.

The US never takes anything off the table including nuclear weapons. It's a war N. Korea can't win, because I believe the US would go nuclear
against them rather than lose S. Korea. Like I said, I believe DPRK knows this. The chance of a full scale invasion is slim.

I was not rewriting history to glorify him, I was just setting the record straight. Granted, he wasn't anywhere close to the greatest President ever,
but he was not 'retarded'. A moron when it comes to making decisions perhaps, but not intellectually stupid.

Back to the thread, no we would not attack first. That would be a violation of international law. South Korea or Japan may attack them, but I know we
would not attack them first.

Originally posted by Schaden
I only advocated a first strike in the event of a massive land invasion. We're bound by treaty to defend South Korea, however I believe the pentagon
would sooner resort to tactical nukes than lose tens of thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands in a grueling useless land war. Of course this
president wouldn't authorize it.

You may not be too far off from reality. Its politically unthinkable, but doctrine and protocol does legitmize the use of tactical nukes in a
situation such as a North Korean invasion. The U.S. military commanders will have to question how many American and South Korean troops they are
willing to lose in such a situation and if it would be worth the effort in the end. The trick is how to convince South Korea the usage of nukes is in
the long run a better solution.

I don't know if air power alone could defend them.

That is actually a major concern held by strategists and analysts who have studied the situation in Korea. Its like a mini-1980s Europe situation.
South Korea isn't exactly bursting with U.S. and ROK troops and the amount of airpower is limited indeed. If North Korea gets its timing right, it
could also avoid a situation where the U.S. could have upwards to six carriers availiable for response. When you factor in logistics, it most
certainly does raise the question as to whether air power alone can hold off the DPRK.

A few dozen low yield warheads would sufficiently break their will. Destroy all retaliatory nuclear weapons and infrastructure in a first
strike, and lay down a row of impacts evenly spaced across the border, creating a wasteland and breaking their lines.

In truth, less than a dozen would do the trick. The impoverished state of the North Korean economy means a single nuke would cripple them for good.

The US never takes anything off the table including nuclear weapons. It's a war N. Korea can't win, because I believe the US would go
nuclear against them rather than lose S. Korea. Like I said, I believe DPRK knows this. The chance of a full scale invasion is slim.

[edit on 30-5-2009 by Schaden]

North Korea cannot win, but the havoc they can wreak on the ROK and perhaps Japan is tremendous. The U.S. may be successful in defeating the invasion,
but they will most certainly fail in protecting South Korean life and property.

As for the chances of a full-scale invasion, never say never. Korea was a supporting theater during the Cold War, but as someone once said, in no
place was the Cold War hotter than on the Korean Peninsula.

North korea going into the south is different than israel going into palestien then?And you know they will again and again.Also you know aswell as I
do they want the whole place even if it means slowly over time.
Nothing done by the US in the gaza situation only waffling as they also know.

So the so called reasons why the US may nuke NK,is becuse of the WMDs the country may have and the threat to the region.Heard that one before.

It was said of saddam, WMDs he didnt have and being a threat to the region.
No nuke used but a land war happened.It was ok for troops to die in Iraq so they could keep raising their bank balances.

Why use nukes.
Nothing there to go into to pillage.So we'll be kind and not sentence our own troops to death this time.
But be sure there's other things in the pipeline to get back to doing it.

Originally posted by bpg131313
It’s good to hear from you. Let’s dive into what was said.

Hi bpg, lets!

You made good observations regarding Japan. Having several Japanese friends myself, I often times get emails from them telling me what they
are hearing around Japan. When it comes to the affairs of Japan, we have been involved ever since General Douglas MacArthur had his hands in the
Occupation of Japan. You may remember from history class that he also led the UN forces against North Korea in 1950-1951. Japan has had us
protecting them since then.

Yup, i think they were observations that most Japanese would share in terms of just how able ( second largest economy on Earth and without all the
accounting fraud probably not as far behind the US as looks) they would be to defend themselves or massively expand their armed forces and strategic
capabilities. That is not something China or Russia would like to see but frankly i am not overly concerned with their concerns. I must disagree as to
the fact that Japan 'had' the US do anything; the US chose to keep Japan relatively disarmed so as to best use the excuse to use Japan as a military
staging base for their own propagation of the capitalist system in general. The US has done this to a number of countries ( most European countries
could massively expand their armed forces) at massive cost to the US tax payer; obviously something few Americans are aware of. The empire likes to
have allies but if you let them get too strong and assertive well then you have problems.

It’s a routine I suppose you can say. We also owe them a lot of money, so perhaps this is their way of using our debt to them as leverage.
I know Japan could put together a top-notch nuclear program if they wanted to.

I agree. Japan were allowed to undermine the American heavy industry in significant ways ( long before China, Taiwan and South Korea came on the
scene) so as to create markets and provide them with the payoffs that would keep their leadership pliant and without much reason to fight for a
independent course of Japan. This is what the Romans and practically every other empire did to keep their client states/allies in line and sooner or
later it has the very same result on the empires original stronghold. I heard the rumours about how quickly Japan could put together a nuclear arsenal
a decade ago so perhaps it's even faster today...

Japan already has extensive PATRIOT systems brought in by the US. The odds of an incoming missile getting through are low. The problem
today is the pace at which things can escalate. A large scale missile barrage could occur over the course of two hours. That’s all they need...two
hours! Things can get to be looking similar to your avatar in that very brief amount of time.

I don't put much faith in the patriot system itself but perhaps the Japanese will not accept the assurances and modify it in ways that might enable a
better interception record than in the last few times i didn't even manage to stop scuds and as ancient silkworms. Either way i could go into a
great deal of detail as to how the British home office prepared hundreds of thousands of death 'cerficates' as that is the type of casualties they
expected based on the 'bomber always go trough' pre war data. As we all know that wasn't the case and the entire Luftwaffe campaign killed about 40
000 Brits. I expect that these prompt casualties are overstated even if no precautions are taken and in fact were used back then to discourage such
preparations as, well, it wouldn't be 'enough'; same logic employed with MAD despite the fact testing showed just how much you could do to limit
casualties to a small percentage.

Either way my Avatar doesn't involve a nuclear blast, a sunrise really, and if this link to my profile works you should get a bit more detail of the
'assassin' (created by Cpt based Dave Wilson)

South Korea is in the same boat as I just discussed. We’re not talking days. We’re talking immediate. When I was there I was told that
five minutes is all the time we have from launch to impact. Five minutes!

But this would be unlikely to happen without a period of escalation when a significant proportion of South Koreans could be evacuated to safer areas.
Admittedly five minutes isn't much but then a artillery shell or scud isn't exactly nuclear tipped; well not yet.

I’m sure that other countries would protest a military action, but those are simply words, nothing more. The North Koreans could be in
Seoul within two hours if they took their time. I know that South Korea is very heavily armored. I know it would be one hell of a fight, but it
would be a quick one. It would go something like this. You go to bed at midnight and see that nothing is happened. You wake up at 5 a.m. the next
morning and all you see on the news is that 45 Million are reportedly dead in Korea and that counter attacks are ongoing.

The North Koreans could get trough good volume of shells in a few hours but there is no practical way from them to get to Seoul in that time period
despite the fact that it's a obvious target. Caen were a major target during operational overlord and yet , because the Germans also understood that
they couldn't lose it, the allies did not manage to take it for two months . If South Korea wishes to defend Seoul , as i am confident they will, it
would cost the North Koreans hundreds of thousands of casualties to encircle it and doubly so to take it. Chemical and biological weapons are fine
ways to kill civilians but the military uses are as limiting to your side as it is to them; defending a bunker in NBC suit is not hard as compared to
dismounting in the effort to capture one.

War these days is far faster than even it was during the Gulf Wars to the point it literally is unnerving. We are there as a deterrent only.
North Korea knows we have extensive reach back capability.

Well i don't buy into all the hype/propaganda and i am familiar with many things that even uniformed people don't seem to be when it comes to these
'super' weapons. From my lay opinion it's not so much that war is 'faster' but that there is less and less hours of rest as night fighting
capabilities and mobility&intelligence capacities increases. Having said that i am not a fanboy and don't buy into very many claims of smart weapons
and all that. The idea that weapons flies into windows and are overwhelmingly smarter than they were during the gulf war is mostly just that and even
then it was obvious that weapons were not nearly as smart or are prevalent on the battlefield as propaganda suggested. Bombs are basically still very
dumb and don't often go exactly where you want them even if you had the capacity to know where exactly you want them. The war over the DMZ will in
my opinion be a brutal attritional slug fest given the truly massive volumes of deeply buried stores on hand as well as the numbers of men and
machines to wield them.I wont even go into how the millions of conscripts on both sides could be in action within hours, days and weeks depending on
their readiness levels. In such situations there isn't 'gaps' to aim for and the concentration of forces required to make them allows enemy
reserves to handily move into place. And no, tactical nukes wont in my opinion change anything for either side in terms creating breaches.

So yes, i don't expect Seoul to be occupied but given the extreme size of North Korean special forces ( of obvious dubious quality) much of South
Korea might experience infrastructure sabotage.

I fear that Ki Jong-Il no longer cares. I don’t know why American’s are still in South Korea. I honestly don’t. To be honest, I
think it’s a legacy thing. Sadly, it isn’t our call, it’s the President’s.

They have not done so yet so i don't see why they should now? If the North Koreans were going to exploit their oppertunities and strength the mid
70's to mid 80's were their 'chance' ( when the USSR reached at least strategic parity; supremacy in my opinion) and i don't think the large
scale run down of the US armed forces in the mid and late 90's helped to recreate those circumstances.

Your comment regarding the USSR, or Communists as you called them, was rather interesting. There was a point, as Senator McCarthy can attest
to, when Communism was extremely feared. Proliferation of the Communist Ideology throughout Asia was a very scary thing back then.

I think i should make it clear that they were not really communist or socialist and certainly not along the idealized lines socialist and communist
expected when they vote for such representative systems. I can easily agree that 'communism' were feared but just like Iraqi's WOMD and 'the
terrorist' the truth about it were very far removed from perceptions created trough a century of corporate capitalist propaganda. As we found out in
the last century, well those who actually read history and don't believe what they hear in classrooms and on TV, the danger didn't come from the
USSR, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba or all the other nationalist liberation movements but from the fact that the capitalist/imperialist who already
controlled the world's fear that these alternative socio-economic models might catch on. As hopeless failures as many proved to be the social ideals
was certainly better than those the corporate/elite classes of the world were trying to enforce at gunpoint hence the near paranoia (
Communism/socialism never had much of chance against such odds) that overtook them and the concerted efforts to undermine anything remotely resembling
self determination as much as they could in each country that they didn't already had a established grip on.

We look at it today and basically shrug our shoulders and wonder what all the fuss was about, but back then, it was a very serious matter. We
were in Korea because we didn’t want the “Communists” to take over all of Korea, especially with those Chinese folks eyeballing Korea so
closely.

The 'communist' never did take over Korea or even North Korea as Kim was first and foremost a nationalist who were forced to take aid from whoever
he could to maintain the primary purpose of keeping North Korea from being occupied by the same old imperialist. In the words of Stanley Earl, a
labor adviser attached to the American aid mission in South Korea( who resigned in July) the South Korean government was "an oppressive regime"
which "did very little to help the people" and that "an internal South Korean rebellion against the Rhee Government would have occurred if the
forces of North Korea had not invaded". Perhaps it should also be noted that the US backed Rhee's party also lost control the Rok's then National
Assembly showing just how unpopular a puppet the US had again picked. Not all together surprising given his absence during the occupation years ( he
lived in the US for decades) while Kim fought in the resistance movement and had his wife murdered by the Japanese. And then people were told that it
was the North Korea/the USSR that refused to allow a free&fair election.....

The aircraft carrier named Taiwan made me laugh. Thanks for that, I needed it. Once again, I think it all comes down to ideology. We keep
Taiwan as Capitalistic as possible hoping that China will have it rub off on them, and it does actually appear to be working to some extent.

Well many places have been called that ( Japan, a few decades ago, Britain&Malta and Sicily during the second world war) but perhaps the best example
today would be Okinawa (en.wikipedia.org...:US_Military_bases_in_Okinawa.jpg ) rather than Taiwan even thought one could perhaps count
the Taiwanese and Japanese air forces as American assets in as much as they are American models.

When it comes to why South Korea and Japan feel threatened, I think it’s because of the unpredictable nature of Kim Jong-Il. He’s
demonstrated the capability of nukes and they fear it’s not in order to keep them locked away in a bunker somewhere. They fear it’s for use
against them.

Well US soldiers stationed in Japan have been responsible for more than a thousand Japanese deaths ( and obviously many more maimed) in the last half
century with very few prosecutions due to the treaty signature that gave US personal extraterritorial right. Admittedly ( perhaps not obvious to some)
these were overwhelmingly vehicular accidents but it does but paid to the idea that Americans need actual weapons to endanger the lives of foreigners
or that the biggest threat to Japanese on a day to day basis were North Korean or communist&terrorist plots. More specifically one or two nuclear
weapons didn't defeat Japan the last time round and if they were allowed to defend themselves they could obliterate North Korea as easily as the USA
could. There never was and still isn't any defensive reason for the US involvement in Japan after the second world war any more than there is such a
defense presence necessary in Germany or South Korea.

Now to turn to the Devil’s Advocate (something I particularly enjoy). If I were Kim Jong-Il and knew I was standing next to my death bed,
though not necessarily in it, I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d take the next nuke I build, put it in the best ICBM I have for satellite launch.
I’d put it on a course to fly over the US, I’d get that thing upwards of 200 miles above Denver and I’d detonate the thing. An EMP would flash
all of the US (And parts of Mexico and Canada), effectively sending the US back to the days before electricity for at least a couple years. Sure,
I’d be blown up for it, but you have to admit, from a Devil’s Advocate point of view, it does put a smile on your face.

A uninformed devil's advocate doesn't really help the devil much and in this case some more knowledge on ICBM technology as well as the size of
nuclear warhead required to do create a significant continent wide effect ( no one is really sure of the effects) and the Russian would have used a
dozen SS-18's with megaton range warhead loadings to come near to ensuring a continent wide blackout of all unprotected, or badly protected,
electrical systems. Korea is decades away from deploying either megaton range weapons, building missiles with sufficient throw weight and
miniaturizing said warheads as much as they would have to. It would be much simpler to create a few dozen dirty bombs, ala Jericho ( and yes, it will
probably not be the North Koreans or external attack when it does happen) , and to smuggle them into the US for distribution In fact that's
precisely what the Russians did, but not because their communist or 'evil', and are still doing to this day.

On that, long, note i will cease and desist all this typing and hope that you can find the time to disagree with as much of this as you would like to.

Text copied from article as the Turner Netowrk link is disabled to everyone but the author.

May 27,2009

Washington, DC (TRN) -- North Korea yesterday withdrew from the Armistice that halted the Korean War. Today, official Washington is abuzz with not so
secret "Top Secret" plans for the United States to make a limited nuclear first strike to wipe out the North Korean threat in one fell swoop.

Russia has been alerted to "make plans" for radiation fallout in its eastern border area.

In consultations with China, the U.S. Ambassador to Beijing was said to be stunned when he was told by the Chinese government "Kim Jung Il is out of
control and dangerous. He has become a serious liability for China. Do what must be done, but please do it in a manner that minimizes risk to
China."

China was then briefed about US plans and asked to prepare its southern population areas for radiation fallout. It is expected that prevailing weather
patterns will disperse fallout over the sea, causing it to thin out dramatically before moving over land.

Worst development since World War 2

Our source in the State Department explained today why this situation got so bad, so fast. "The Korean War legally never ended." he said. "There is
no peace treaty, there is only an Armistice, a formal cease-fire. When North Korea officially withdrew from the Armistice yesterday, it automatically
brought us back into a hot war. "he continued.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, the high ranking state department source told Turner Radio
Network (TRN):

"Of all the scenarios involving North Korea, withdrawing from the Armistice was the one thing we thought they never would do. Since the War, everyone
has known that withdrawing from the Armistice means the cease-fire is over. Today, that cease fire is over; we are back at war with North Korea and
this time, the outcome will not be negotiated. Withdrawing from the Armistice was the last mistake North Korea will ever make. Their leadership must
surrender now or they are nothing more than dead men walking. It's over for them" he finished.

Pentagon: Nuclear first strike "Likely"

Early in the evening on Tuesday, President Barack Obama gave permission for the US Military to airlift "Patriot Missile Air Defense" systems to
South Korea and additional units to bolster 16 systems already in Japan. Those systems were airborne hours later and arrived in South Korea and Japan
today.

The model of Patriot Missile systems sent is "PAC-3" and they were accompanied by M-901 control stations and AN/MPQ-53 phased array radar.

Sources with acute knowledge of the plans for North Korea have confirmed to TRN that a US nuclear first strike is going to be launched.

The first strike will be carried out through submarine-launched, BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles, model TLAM/A whose explosive payload can be
"dialed" to be anywhere from 100 kilotons to one point five megatons nuclear yield per missile.

There will be no warning. North Korea will not be able to track the incoming cruise missiles via radar. The only way they will know the attack is
taking place is when they see a blinding white flash as the temperature rises to ten thousand degrees and the wind gusts to 650 miles per hour.

North Korean troops along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) will be hit first to prevent them from invading south Korea. Multiple cruise missiles using
Time of Arrival (TOA) control will detonate simultaneously along the DMZ, wiping out over one million North Korean troops in seconds.

Minutes later, after the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) confirms that the North Korean leadership has been told by their own command structure
that their troops at the DMZ have all been killed, Kim Jung Il will be contacted and asked if he is willing to surrender. It is expected he will
not.

At that point, a B-2 Stealth Bomber will be sent in to deliver the final blow. Pyongyang will be hit with a surface detonation of a massive nuclear
bomb, wiping out the entire city and the entire government of North Korea.

As soon as that surface detonation takes place, several hundred additional cruise missiles carrying conventional payloads and launched from land, air
and sea sites, will hit every North Korean military facility in the entire country, instantly crippling their entire command and control system.
Carrier based Aircraft will then fly in to clean up whatever resistance remains.

It is expected the war will be over within one or two days. Korea will be reunited. It's Capitol will be Seoul and its government will be
democratically elected.

One strike, two purposes

This difficult decision to make a nuclear first strike was arrived at because the threat of North Korea invading South Korea once hostilities resume
was too great a danger to world stability. The world does not need or want another large, lengthy war.

The decision to use a nuclear first strike serves another purpose as well: sending a clear message to countries like Pakistan, India and Iran about
what they can expect if they continue traveling down the nuclear road.

The thinking in Washington, Beijing and Moscow is that the world needs to send this message and there will not be a better reason or better time to
send it than now.

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